Me: “I suppose, but I was just about to start work on an exposé on the off-brand diaper industry.”

Editor: “Shitty job. Do this music review.”

Me: “You know you stole that joke from ‘Smokey and the Bandit,’ right?”

Editor: “You’re fired. After you do the music review.”

Me: “But it’s an EP. We don’t normally do EPs.”

Editor: “Is Wayne Brady gonna have to choke a bitch?”

Me: “I’m on it, chief.”

After three failed email attempts, two junked FTP transfers, and an unfortunate trip into the steamy underworld of file sharing, I finally got my hands on a copy of Not An Airplane’s “Everything Is Not Loveable” EP. And immediately upon listening, I was struck by a dilemma: what the hell kind of music is this?

Err, that came out wrong. What I mean is, I had trouble finding a genre. Being an unpaid faux-music-reviewer (as in a faux reviewer of music, not a reviewer of faux music), I’m not up on the ridiculously fine-hair-splitting categories kids use these days. Our previous review of their work called them “folk,” but the current work was a little rock-heavy with country sounds to fit that mold in my mind (that mold being “bearded men who smell of patchouli” and “women who don’t shave their armpits”). But I know there’s this “alt-country” thing, so I looked it up on wikipedia; on that site, a bunch of people who take themselves too seriously typed a bunch of stuff about a genre they take too seriously. For lack of a better label, I’ll call them “alt-country,” which, to the best of my understanding, means they’re country-ish without sounding like country. It could sound like bluegrass or punk rock and somebody will call it alt-country, so that works for me. The guitar’s a little twangy at times, and the vocals are a little twangy at times… it fits. Twenty years ago, they would have been “southern rock.” But I digress.

The half-dozen tracks on this album have a nice variety. The “more involved lyrics you have to think about a little” track is titled “Loveable.” The “whoa, where did that random guitar riff come from?” award goes to “Nothing To Lose.” There’s a “put this song first on the mix CD you send to your girlfriend because you think she’s about to dump you” song (“At The Very Least”), a “I think I need the backstory to understand where you’re going with this” song (“Past Tennessee”), and a “‘I remember being oxygen’? What does that lyric even MEAN?” song (“Resolution And Rage”). So even though you’ve only got six tracks, you really have pretty much covered the gamut of musical expression. And since the whole thing clocks in at just under 20 minutes, it’s a good album to pop in if you’re driving home from work and want something mellow… or if you’re driving home from the bar and can’t get the sound of the Allman Brothers out of your head because somebody dropped $5 in the jukebox and played that entire 20 Century Masters collection CD.

Song You Should Buy for $1 on iTunes, Rather Than Downloading For Free: Loveable. It’s mellow without being clich

é, a trap which a lot of songs can never quite manage. But it picks up in the middle–not enough to rock your face off, but enough to get your head nearly banging.